


Lucky To Be In Love With My Best Friend

by chasing_givenchy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Deconstructing cliches, F/F, Family Shenanigans, HP: Epilogue Compliant, House Rivalry, Misunderstandings, Quidditch, Slytherin Albus Severus Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_givenchy/pseuds/chasing_givenchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's convinced the 'signs' are there that Scorpius Malfoy is secretly in love with Rose. After all, they're best friends, and it's the cliché... isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky To Be In Love With My Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Interhouse Fest](http://interhouse-fest.livejournal.com) on LJ.

"Oh look, there's your charming friend. The view would be  _much_  improved if he just took his shirt off."

   Rose's grip on Dominique's arm tightened involuntarily the second she recognised the couple half-inside the broom closet. They looked like they were snogging for England, and Dominique's derision couldn't dent their enthusiasm. Bright red with embarrassment, Rose wanted nothing more than to pretend she wasn't seeing this. In fact, she wanted to pretend she wasn't even here. She tried to tug Dominique away in the opposite direction, but with fantastic timing, Scorpius Malfoy detached himself from the busty Ravenclaw Prefect and flashed Rose his most brilliant smile.

   "Hullo, Weasley. Nice day to be taking a walk, isn't it?"

   "V-very nice day." It wasn't so much the fact that Scorpius's robes were acting as a makeshift blanket to cushion their amorous activities, or even that the Ravenclaw Prefect's shirt was unbuttoned to her waist, showing off a whole lot of lace. It wasn't even the fact that this was Rose's  _best friend_  in the whole world, kneeling in a broom closet and trying to Dracula a senior seventh-year.

   It was the fact that he was beaming brightly at Rose, as though she had just walked in on him making pancakes for breakfast, and that in fact, his trousers did not give every indication that he was  _very_  happy to see her.

   Dominique didn't even try to be subtle: she snickered. Scorpius seemed entirely unfazed.

   "Aren't you girls supposed to be at Quidditch practice? God knows your sorry team needs it—  _oh_." He took in the freshly-scrubbed look, the wet hair, and the faint smell of lavender and lemon, and grinned. "Don't you just love having a captain who makes you do drills in the rain?"

   "Proof of the mud pie is in the eating," snapped Rose, momentarily distracted by this slight against their House. "My brother—cousin—may be a pillock with schedules, but come Saturday, you'll be hanging on to your broom for dear life and crying for your mummy."

   "Good to know you've finally realised trash talk must compulsorily involve one reference to someone's mother. You're a fast learner."

   Unnoticed, the Ravenclaw Prefect began to button up her blouse surreptitiously. Dominique gave her a look of the utmost sympathy.

   "Of course," went on Scorpius blithely, "you're not very intimidating when you smell like flowers and shampoo. Would you like some silver bells and cockle shells to go with that?" Rose waited patiently. "Heh,  _cockle_  shells." She rolled her eyes.

 

"So," said Dominique later, with no preamble, leaning over and stealing half of the mashed potatoes off Rose's dinner plate. "How long has Scorpius been in love with you?"

   Rose choked on her pumpkin juice.

 

"In how many ways can I tell you this? Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy is not in love with me. He is incapable of being in love with anyone (besides himself) except his own mirror."

   "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," said Lysander Scamander, flicking an errant blade of grass out of Dominique's hair. She shifted, getting more comfortable in his lap, and shot a triumphant  _I told you so_  look up at Rose.

   "All the signs are there. You're just too blind to see them."

 

"You know, Dominique has this fascinating theory that you're in love with me." Rose snorted, pulling her knees closer to her chest so as to inspect her toenails better as she trimmed them with her wand. Scorpius said nothing, and she looked up in alarm. "Oh come on!" she yelped, her voice bouncing through the rafters from their alcove in the library. "Don't tell me you believe in that nonsense."

   "I dunno…" His brow was furrowed pensively. "Potter said the same thing to me a while back. I told him to stop being so daft, but…" The thoughtfulness cleared like fog being blown away, and he leaned forward, pressing one warm hand on top of Rose's knee. "Don't worry, Weasley. You're my best friend, you always will be. Ignore what those idiots say."

   His hand lingered on her knee a second longer than strictly necessary, rubbing against her leg through her robes as it slid off. It happened so casually it couldn't be accidental.

 

"Oh, Merlin, you  _were_  right. He is in love with me."

   Dominique didn't look up immediately, finishing the column in  _Witch Weekly_  that she was reading, before transferring her attention to Rose who had just burst into the girls' dorm. "I told you,  _cherie_ ," she said with that infuriating French accent she acquired whenever she was being especially smug. "All the signs were there. For Merlin's sake, he stopped in the middle of taking off a ridiculously attractive  _seventh-year's_  clothes to talk to you about Quidditch. And he knows what your shampoo smells like. That's either very romantic or very creepy. Or both," she amended, thinking it over. "Depending on how romantic you think stalkers are."

   The horrible part was that as vain and insufferable Dominique usually was, she was still sharper than a recently broken shard of glass, and more astute than a shrew. Rose considered the plethora of signs that Dominique  _insisted_  she had just been blind to. Cataloguing aspects of Scorpius's behaviour around her — the fact that he was usually always immediately attentive when she walked into a room, how he was always coming up with dumb things for them to do (but now it just seemed like transparent excuses to spend more time with her), how he'd never been able to hold down a serious relationship but had always shown a marked preference for brunettes—

   _What was she even thinking_? Scorpius tried very hard to be a very good Lothario; he was bound to be really shite as a boyfriend and she couldn't be stupid enough even to  _think_  of him in that capacity. It was, in short, Dominique's fault for having an extra-vivid imagination.

***

"Do you have any idea," began Rose mournfully, staring down at her Potions essay, marked with a curvy, calligraphic P, "just how _awful_ it is to take after your dad more than your mum?"

   "Would you believe me if I told you I do?" Scorpius laughed, and she glanced at him, sideways, startled. She blushed.

   "Sorry—I—completely didn't—I'm—"

   He pressed his hand over her mouth to cut her off, amused to see her blush even harder. It baffled him sometimes when his best mate exhibited such signs of being girly because his most lasting impression of her was the bloodthirsty second-year who tried to knock him off his broom in his first House match. She was a competitor, an equal, the person he'd Owl if the Wizengamot ever declared him "guilty on thirty counts of peeking up a girl's robes and to be sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban." It was hard sometimes to see why his other friends found her pretty or tried to peek down her robes. She was Rose, just Rose.

   And Albus Severus Potter was an idiot of the highest order.

   "So, hey," he went on, realising belatedly that his hand was still over Rose's mouth and she looked scarlet from asphyxiation probably. He shoved both hands into his pockets, and started walking back from the Potions dungeons to the Great Hall. "There's the Hogsmeade weekend coming up, and I need someone to help me carry back all the chocolate I intend to stock up from Honeyduke's. Care to be my accomplice as I conduct an armed robbery of the place?"

   "You want  _me_  to go with you to Hogsmeade next weekend?"

   He didn't get why she was staring at him like that. He knew for a fact that Rose hated chocolate. It had something to do with James enchanting an army of Chocolate Frog into animation and scaring her silly when she was six, but the long and short of it, was this:

   "Absolutely. Basically, I don't trust Potter not to steal our own supply, and you'd be the perfect partner in crime anyway, so, what do you say?"

   "Oh-okay."

   He beamed. "Perfect!"

   "We'd be l-like Bonnie and Clyde."

   Muggleborns in the family. He still didn't get them. He nodded as if in complete understanding, linked his arm through hers, and began talking her ear off about Slytherin was going to cream Gryffindor this weekend, but to his surprise, she didn't retaliate. Huh. Something must be getting her down. When she leaned her head on his shoulder, wrapping one arm around his waist, he was a little more surprised, but he let her. She probably needed comfort and support whatever problem she was in the middle of dealing with.

   "You know you're plenty smart, don't you?" he said eventually, in case she was still worried about telling her mother about the 'P'. "It's a noted fact that sixty-three percent of children who have a stellar Quidditch player for a parent eventually let the game take over their life. Usually, it eclipses all their other talents."

   "My dad's an Auror."

   "Yeah, but when they say  _Weasley can save anything_ , they're not talking about  _you_. Usually, you're no match for our Chasers."

   She elbowed him in the ribs. "You don't even play that position."

   "Aha! So you admit you're no match for me?"

 

"You're off Honeydukes duty, mate— oh. Er, hello. Have you seen a loud, daft bugger called Albus around these parts? Named after the rare Slytherin Headmaster of this school, great credit to our House he is, when he's not setting off his own Dungbombs by accident."

   The girl and boy wading through the Pumpkin Patch turned around. The girl giggled; the boy who looked like some fifth-year, probably in her classes, looked less thrilled about the interruption. "I'll make sure to tell my brother you said that," Lily promised.

   Scorpius grinned. "In exchange for me not telling him about— sorry, what's your name again?"

   "Zacharias Ernest MacMillan-Smith II," Lily answered for the boy. Scorpius didn't envy anyone who'd obviously been named after both his dads. "And yeah," she said, her wicked pink glossy lips widening in a disingenuous smile, "no one needs to know."

   She took Zacharias's hand in hers and the two of them were gone with a swish of her long shiny hair and in a cloud of orange-scented perfume. Scorpius shrugged to himself, and continued to the greenhouse.

 

"Looking forward to being mowed down by your girlfriend?" asked Albus innocently, as he pulled on his Keeper's gloves. His amusement at watching Scorpius battle with his new Quidditch robes was almost indecent.

   "What are you talking about?" grumbled Scorpius, trying not choke on the smell of starch. "I don't  _have_  a— shut up." Albus smirked. "She's your cousin, shouldn't you be telling me to stay the hell away from her, or else you'll feed me to the Giant Squid?"

   Albus pretended to consider this. "Nah. You two are so sickeningly cute together I think that's punishment enough."

   "For the sake of Merlin's unwashed underpants, what is it going to take for you to get it through your thick head that Rose and I are not—"

Someone rapped on the door of the changing room. "Five minutes, come on," yelled the unmistakable tones of their captain who wasn't allowed into the boys' room. Albus was still smirking.

   "You're the one who's taking her to Hogsmeade to buy her loads of chocolate."

   Too preoccupied with other troubles to argue, Scorpius pinched his nose tightly and adjusted his robes.

 

When he came to again, he first perceived the faint smell of orange, disinfectant, and pumpkin juice. It was the ubiquitous smell of the Hospital Wing. Angling his head fractionally and extremely gingerly, he could see the bedside table was weighed down with flowers and gift boxes from Honeydukes. He felt marginally better: it was excellent consolation for taking a Bludger to the side of the head. Especially, he thought, considering that he'd sent that very same Bludger Older Potter's way, and the Gryffindor Beater was returning the favour.

   "Knocked out by your own balls, there's a joke about that somewhere."

   Cautiously, very, very cautiously so as not to crick anything that didn't already hurt, Scorpius turned his head the other way to take in the fact that he had a visitor. It wasn't, he realised, Albus or Rose. But the disappointment soon passed.

   "Hello there," he said in the most charming voice he could muster, while in the throes of critical injury. "From my vantage point, you're looking like a right  _angel_."

   Lily giggled and sat down on the side of the bed. The mattress dipped, and he shifted his bruised body to accommodate her. She quickly stalled him with a hand, whether she knew it or not, on his thigh, which sent the fastest rush he'd felt through him. He started and tried to scoot away from her. She pretended not to notice any of this, but her innocently oblivious expression was worthy of Dominique Weasley.

   "So," he said, looking for something to say that wasn't vastly embarrassing, "who won?"

   For the first time, there was a chink in her perfectly poised armour. "Er, Slytherin did?" she hazarded with very little conviction. He stared.

   "Don't you know?"

   Her shoulders stiffened. "I'm sorry if I'm not a carbon copy of a slogan-screaming bloodthirsty manic spectator wanting fellow students to get whapped around the head with flying cannon balls, all for the sake of a tiny gold- _plated_  golf ball." She crossed her arms and gave him a withering look for good measure, but the only effect her little speech had was to send him off in laugh-induced stitches.

   "The whole  _school_  was out there on the pitch," he wheezed when he could finally speak again through the crushing pain in his sides. "What were you doing that was so important?"

   Defensive haughtiness had melted into a twinkly-eyed smile of mischief.

   " _Oh_."

   "Yes. Oh,  _yes_."

   "While the rest of Gryffindor was rooting for their team, you were doing MacMillan-Smith the Second, weren't you?"

   She frowned. "That's not right."

   "You mean you have some House loyalty left after all?"

   "Er, no. I mean, that's not what I meant. I'm not in 'the rest of Gryffindor'. I'm a Hufflepuff."

   Scorpius felt like James Sirius  ~~Pratface~~ Potter had hit him with the other Bludger.

 

"Did you know your sister's in Hufflepuff?" demanded Scorpius with unwarranted aggression when he was visited by his two favourite mates in the Hospital Wing later.

   "Um, yes."

   "What sister?"

   "Lily," he said quickly for Rose's benefit, before re-focusing his glare on Albus. Pissed off as he was at her for wresting victory away from him, he had a bigger bone to pick with Albus. "Why was I never informed of this fact?"

   Albus went to the head of the bed, pressing a hand to Scorpius's forehead as if to check for a fever.

   "Do you remember what House James is in?" asked Rose innocently. He glared at her. She went on, undeterred: "I don't know how much you remember but he  _did_  say something like  _For Godric_  when the Snitch was caught. Creatures on the other side of the Forbidden Forest probably heard it too."

   He glared harder, but it still had no effect. Laughing, Albus sat down on the bed. The sheets were still tousled from when Lily had sat on it. "Mate, what's gotten into you? You were there the day she got Sorted." Albus sounded slightly worried. "Why would I need to specially tell you what House my sister's in?"

   "Well, why would I be paying attention at the Ceremony at the time?" Scorpius snapped, infuriated by how thick they were being. "I mean, she was _eleven_ at the time, and  _now_ —"

   Oh bugger.

   He clamped his jaws shut and tried to pretend he hadn't said a word. Albus's eyes were narrowed dangerously, but there was no accounting for the wide-eyed shock that shot across Rose's face.

 

   "My sister is fifteen. No, scratch that, she's my sister. And I actually happen to like Rose, she's cool for a nerdy Quidditch player, which is an aberration in itself. You two are perfect for each other, but try not to break her heart." Albus looked up from his absent-minded doodling of Babbitty Rabbitty on Scorpius's Transfiguration textbook. "But come near my sister, and I  _will_  break your face."

 

That was, if nothing else, just an incentive to chase his sister. There was just one thing standing in Scorpius's way: Albus's sister was a Hufflepuff. That was unacceptable.

   "You're just taking the mickey, aren't you?" he asked her in his most persuasive tones, dropping down next to her. Arguably, he was breaking the peaceful idyll of sitting by the lake and feeding the Giant Squid, but the latter activity wasn't very idyllic now, was it?

   "Um."

   "I mean, you're not really in  _Hufflepuff_ , are you? You're just a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw with a sense of humour, and Albus is in on the joke. That's the truth, isn't it? You can tell me, I see right through it."

   "Wouldn't it be worse if I was really a Gryffindor?"

   He thought about clichés like sleeping with the enemy (preferably when the enemy was a little older) and  _mission: seduce and destroy_ , and vehemently shook his head. "Trust me, this is worse."

   Lily shrugged. "Sorry then." Her toffee-coloured eyes sparkled with wicked glee. "My Uncle Ron sent me a Howler, disowning me for not being Sorted into Gryffindor. He can send another one if you'd like to hear it for yourself: it's his pet subject around Albus and me."

   The sound filling his ears was that of his glass hopes and dreams splintering into uncountable pieces.

   "Cheer up," Lily was saying pleasantly, but he heard her only faintly. "Things could be  _much_  worse. You're lucky I'm not ugly."

 

Things got a little sticky when he had to explain his sudden interest in his best friend's fifteen-year-old sister to his other best friend. Rose was wearing a suspiciously Albus-like expression as he tried to explain his position, speaking in whispers to not alert Madam Pince. He was doubly conscious of needing to choose the right words because she was correcting his Transfiguration homework for him.

   "So, in short, you're not chasing after her because she's a Hufflepuff." Rose sounded inordinately relieved at this, but Scorpius didn't correct her. "And in fact, you're going to resume trying to shag any woman who so much as gives you the time of the day."

   "Yeah. Exactly." Her frown remained in place, so he tried to lighten the mood. "Hey, Rose, do you have the time?"

   She didn't laugh. Rather, judging by how hard she was blushing, she was probably extremely embarrassed on his behalf.

 

"You know, I think she's gone utterly mental." Having reached this edifying conclusion, Scorpius tried to explain it to Albus. "I think the stress of balancing tests and Quidditch is getting to her. One moment she's lobbing Quaffles like a bloke, the next moment she's giggling and blushing."

   Albus treated him to a scathing look. "She blushes, does she? What does that tell you?"

   Scorpius wasn't listening. "No wait, just blushing. She doesn't giggle, thank Merlin."

   In all fairness, he thought, Lily was endearing when she did.

 

Things went from bad to worse to shite when Lily broke up with Zacharias Ernest MacMillan-Smith II in the most awkward way possible. He was saying something about being tired of coming second to lip gloss and hair-straightening charms all the time, and she was tuning him out.

   "Awful at relationships, aren't they?" Dominique sighed, threading her fingers through her hair. It glistened like a beacon in the darkness of the broom closet, and Scorpius crouched back on his heels, listening hard.

   "It's about time we got out. I don't fancy being cooped up in here for much longer. Five minutes is an awful long time to wait for someone to make a move. If you're done being hung up on a certain other Weasley, we can both admit this was a pointless exercise and go our separate ways. Oh look, you're blushing."

   " _What_? I am not." Scorpius's glare managed to communicate itself even in the dark because Dominique's quiet laughter now sounded muffled. "I'm not blushing."

   Five seconds later, he realised he should have refuted the other claim as well.

   "Are you calling me high-maintenance?" Lily's voice came sharp, cold, and terrifyingly clear, perfectly audible even to the occupants of the broom closet.

   "Yeah, I think I am. For Merlin's sake, Lily, nothing about you is ever easy. If you're not obsessed with your reflection, you're either talking about it or talking about these ridiculous things that only you're interested in—"

   "The Weird Sisters aren't ridiculous. And neither are the Wimbledon Wasps."

   "Whatever, Lily. What about the things  _I'm_  interested in?"

   "It's not my fault you're not interested in anything remotely cool."

   The sting of rejection hung in the air like a slap. Then Zacharias Ernest MacMillan-Smith II sighed, as if the battle wasn't even worth fighting. "Whatever, again, Lily. I sincerely hope you find someone as shallow as you are because you'll make any other bloke you meet miserable. And for the record, a pre-Gringotts-break-in coin collection _is_ pretty cool."

   Scorpius strained his ears, but he heard nothing. There was no sound of crying. He could picture Lily taking stock of her life, the way things were, and squaring her shoulders and walking off. Dominique squeezed his knee in silent sympathy.

 

"Does Rose know that you were seen crawling out of a broom closet with her cousin and friend?"

   Having just stepped into the Common Room to be arrested by this statement-question, Scorpius mentally awarded Albus full points for dramatic timing. He snapped his fingers for a first-year to vacate the other armchair near the fire, and settled into it himself. Finally, he transferred some part of his attention to the question-statement he had been dreading the most.

   "It's really not what it looked like."

   Albus snorted. "You were in a broom closet with a part-Veela. I know you, I want details. And on a  _completely unrelated note_ , does Rose know? Will there be a ménage a trois?"

   Scorpius leaned over and punched him. "Shut up. Just. Ick. No. Do not bring up Rose and encounters of that nature. And Dominique might be the incarnation of all evil, so no either."

   "Right. All the gratuitous denial aside then, are you going to explain yourself?"

   He sighed. "It was her fault. Dominique made me do it."

   "You know, everyone always says that, but I just have such a hard time actually believing it."

   "Don't be difficult. She cornered me with this mad theory of hers that I'm secretly in love with Rose and in denial about it. I told her to sod off, obviously, because I think I would know if I wanted to snog my best friend, but no, just no. She refused to believe me, and to prove her point, said that I couldn't get it off with her even if I tried."

   Albus choked. "You tried to get it off with her in the  _broom closet_?"

   "No, I did  _not_ , but if I were trying to, it'd be the perfect place, wouldn't it? It's stocked to the roof with cleaning supplies." Shaking his head at the incredulous look he was receiving from Albus, he went on: "In short, Dominique is mental because she thinks I can't shag her because I'm in love with someone else. I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. There's no one I'm in love with. I don't  _do_  love."

   "So,  _did_  you shag her then?"

 

"The Weird Sisters are so not overrated."

   Opening with this non-sequitur, Scorpius slid into the empty chair next to Lily at her table in the library. He was a little pressed for time, since he was supposed to be meeting Rose in their alcove in less than five minutes, but he hadn't seen Lily around for days. This time, when he was actively trying to seek her out, she was still as ephemeral as when he wasn't.

   "I'm sure you're entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is basically rubbish."

   Scorpius grinned. She gave him a tentative smile in return.

   "Aren't you afraid that my Hufflepuff mediocrity will rub off on you?"

   He stared at her, scandalised. "Lily Luna Potter, this is the twenty-first century. We don't believe in discrimination and false stereotyping anymore; you should be ashamed of yourself for even trying to spread it!"

   She rolled her eyes, but made no effort to go back to the book she'd been reading. He flipped to the cover with one hand, eyebrow rising dryly when he saw the title: it involved coins and goblins.

   "What?" she said, stiffening defensively. "You don't think I'm smart enough to be reading this sort of thing?"

   The eyebrow didn't lower itself. It didn't matter, he realised, that she wasn't into rubbish like that. What mattered was how little she understood of how much better she was than that. "Do your brothers know about MacMillan-Smith in the first place, let alone the fact that you broke up?"

   "Go be an arse to someone else. I can't deal with you too on top of everything else."

   He was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry. I'm not actively trying to rub your face in it, but he was still a prat of the highest order, and you could always do so much better."

   Intellectually, he knew he was being played, guilt-tripped, but she knew she had an advantage, and she pressed it home for the win. That kind of subtle power play was incredibly sexy in a girl, even if he was bearing the brunt of it.

   "You think so?" she said coolly. "I'm sure you mean by doing  _better_ , you mean  _you_."

   "Sure. Do me."

   There was nothing stern or disapproving about the look she was giving him, the heavy-lidded eyes smoky with mutual desire, the smile that curved up not-so-innocently. She dipped her chin, angling her head ever so slightly, and he had never been surer that he was going to kiss her. Then, there, no hesitation. His hand grasped her thigh, sliding upwards, and he leaned in closer, certain that she, like her lip gloss, would taste like orange.

   Someone's book bag hit the back of his head as they walked on by, breaking the spell. Lily looked up and away, and Scorpius winced. Rubbing the sore spot, he turned in his chair to see who it had been.

   That curly hair was unmistakably Rose.


End file.
